PrimeLife’s track record

I’ve got experience of Ashlands, I’ve got experience of taking the company to court and winning. But what about the other 55 homes that PrimeLife runs. Perhaps all the rest of PrimeLife’s care homes are fine—and I was just unlucky with the one I chose.

The picture in 2016

The Care Quality Commission is rolling out a new type of inspection and are still working their way through all of PrimeLife’s 61 registered services. As of August 2016 reports had been published on 38 out of this total. You can see the results at a glance if you click here.   But to save you the trouble here are the key facts:

• Just under 40% of these homes and services fail to meet the grade—they were rated as ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’
• Or to put it another way, only 60% of the PrimeLife care homes inspected under the new system are classified as ‘good’

Consistency over the long run

But maybe these overall statistics don’t matter—as long as you pick one of the good ones? Wrong, unfortunately, as my experience shows. Ashlands passed the inspection just before my mum moved in. If I’d looked at the bigger picture—its record over time– I might have made a different decision. If you’ve already looked at the Ashlands: a care home with a history you’ll know that out of the last 5 inspections, 3 have been failures (including the most recent this autumn). So for any care home you’re thinking about:

• You’ll obviously want to know what the most recent inspection said.
• But it’s no good if the care home that passes the inspection today  turns out to be rubbish tomorrow (just look at Ashland’s latest report ). Of course, you can never be sure about the future—but it’s helpful to check out whether a home has a consistent track record. How did it do in the previous inspection—and the one before that, and the one before that?

In the summer of 2015 I wanted to get an overview of how good PrimeLife’s care homes were.  I went through the CQC inspection reports on each of the care homes that the company ran at the time. I looked at the last 3 reports[1]for each of PrimeLife’s homes and whether any of the essential or fundamental standards[2] had been failed in each inspection. This is what I found on 13.07.15:

• Only around a quarter of PrimeLife’s homes managed to meet all the essential or fundamental standards in each of their last 3 consecutive inspections
• 10% of PrimeLife’s homes failed to meet one or more of the CQC’s standards on each of their most recent inspections.
• As of July 2015 over their last 3 consecutive inspections 75% of PrimeLife’s care homes had failed to meet one or more of the CQC’s essential standards or had been rated as ‘requires improvement’ in at least one of the fundamental standards.

It probably won’t come as a surprise that, as of June 2015, the CQC had had to issue a total of 9 ‘warning notices’ and ‘requirements’ against PrimeLife care homes. So what’s a warning notice? Here’s an extract from the CQC’s own guidance:

We can issue Warning Notices to a registered person where the quality of the care they are responsible for falls below what is legally required. We can use them to tell a registered person that they are not compliant with the law – this includes the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (“the Act”), and the regulations made under it, but also it includes other legislation that they are legally obliged to comply with in delivering the service.

The  picture in 2023: an improvement–but……..?

So 7 years down the road, how’s this money making machine doing. The latest CQC reports indicate that about 25% of all the facilities run by PrimeLife are rated as inadequate or in need of improvement. Better than the 40% of 7 years ago–but still pretty disgraceful. Imagine the reaction if 1 in 4 Hondas failed, or a quarter of all the washing machines produced by Bosch didn’t do the business. Customers would turn away in droves, shareholders would sell up, managers would be sacked. But it’s different in care homes. Residents are mostly captives, too old or sick or unsupported to walk away and relatives too weary to help them. The scandal of poor care’s too private to create a public outrage.

PrimeLife in the headlines and on the web: what else can you find out about the company?

Well, if you go to Company’s House you learn that it’s a profitable business—with operating profit of over £7.5 million in 2014. The Chairman is doing rather well too: worth £54 million in the Leicester Mercury’s rich list a couple of years ago.

And then there are the headlines that PrimeLife homes have made in the national or local press over the last few years, together with other information freely available from public bodies. Just click on the headline (copied directly from each website) to find out more:

• Residents at a care home are “at risk of abuse” after unexplained injuries were not investigated by staff the health watchdog has found. Headlines from a 2021 BBC report about the scandal at Charnwood Oaks
• Leicester nursing home failings ‘led to death’. In 2010 the BBC website reported that “Failings by staff at a Leicester nursing home led to the premature death of a resident, a coroner has said.“
• Man’s scalding death ‘accidental’. A care home where a pensioner died in a scalding bath had been warned its tap water was too hot, an inquest heard The BBC website reported in 2004 that “The inquest at Leicester Crown Court heard inspectors from the National Care Standards Commission had made the warning about hot water after a visit one month before Mr Jones died.” 
• The cruelty of a ‘carer’: Judge jails worker who imprisoned Alzheimer’s sufferers in bedrooms (and if you check the report you’ll find that carer was described as the husband of the home’s manager). The MailOnLine reported in 2012: A carer who terrorised patients during night shifts at a care home is behind bars after a judge branded him as ‘cruel and almost sadistic’.
• Care concerns lead to contract cancellation The Leicester Mercury reported that County Hall had cancelled a contract because the CQC had found failings in 9 areas of the service at Prime Life’s Peaker Park
• Phoenix Park Care Village branded inadequate and put into special measures The report in a Scunthorpe local paper in December 2015 also states that ‘A damning report into the home also reveals that Humberside police investigated an “allegation of abuse” relating to an ex-employess. Police confirmed an investigation took place, but nobody was charged.’
• Dementia sufferer husband killed by two weeks in a care home: Pensioner suffered ‘appalling neglect’ during stay while his devoted wife took a holiday break A MailOnLine  headline from May 2016. The report describes how “Staff had failed to get medical help as Mr Dearnley’s health deteriorated alarmingly following a series of falls. He was in pain and had ‘virtually stopped eating and drinking’. There were nine members of staff involved in his care, yet no one took responsibility to call a doctor – a basic intervention that a coroner concluded may have saved his life.”
• Closure threat to Westerlands Care Home where untrained staff restrained elderly A 2016 report in a Hull local paper also states “Health inspectors spotted a member of staff mopping the hallway after a resident had defecated, before using the mop in residents’ rooms, spreading the risk of infection. Another carer was seen lifting up an elderly woman’s skirt to adjust an incontinence pad in a busy communal area.”
• A former nursing home manager has admitted being verbally abusive to a mentally-ill patient in her care  A 2016 court case involving a PrimeLife home care home. The Leicester Mercury report also refers to ‘a culture of dishonesty’ at the home, with staff not turning up for work (whilst still claiming wages for the hours they should have been working) “leaving the 18 bed home…..under-staffed by up to 50%”
• Not really a headline—but an official website describing concerns about another care home that Prime Life used to run. All placements at Wyton Abbey Care Home in East Yorkshire were suspended and a serious case review was launched because of the “range and depth of concerns about the safety of the home” (quote from Executive Summary of the report of the East Riding Safeguarding Adults board in 2013). You can look for yourself by clicking here.
• A Freedom of Information request to the Care Quality Commission, revealed that between September 2010 and September 2014, the CQC had received 858 complaints and expressions of concern about PrimeLife homes (excluding Ashlands). That’s 858 occasions on which a member of the public, a resident, a professional or a member of staff was sufficiently concerned to take the matter directly to the CQC.

For the record, I should point out that, I have taken every possible precaution to ensure that all the above information is accurate. With the exception of the latest snapshot, all information has been submitted in writing to the Chairman of PrimeLife. In face to face  meeting in October 2015, on 4 separate occasions he was asked directly to correct any errors of fact. Whilst insisting that there were errors of fact, he repeatedly refused the opportunity to identify them or provide correction.

But in the interests of balance, read what PrimeLife says about itself

Go to its website and you’ll see these words:

At PrimeLife we specialise in providing a high quality standard of living tailored to our clients’ individual needs. We ensure that our clients’ respect, dignity and right of choice are at the heart of everything we do. We offer comfortable, homely and safe living in a friendly and sociable environment, ensuring all of our clients enjoy life with PrimeLife.

[1] I included routine inspections and inspections that were triggered by concerns, but not the inspections carried out to follow up issues that had already been unearthed in a previous inspection

[2] The most recent CQC inspections look at what it terms ‘fundamental standards’ and grades performance against them, rather than a simple pass/fail standard used with the earlier system